Mike Riopell

As election day nears, legislative races are hotly contested in some parts of the state. We preview those and look at the odds of a Republican take-over…

Republican Mel Thillens is a first-time candidate for the Illinois House, but his name has been carried across the state on the sides of large trucks for…

Few Illinois campaign watchers — including Republicans — dispute the conventional political wisdom that the GOP could have a tough election year in 2012…

Changing political parties may have seemed like an obvious decision for state Rep. Paul Froehlich. In 2006, the Schaumburg lawmaker was a Republican who…

As Chicago's suburbs grow increasingly hard to label as predominantly Republican because of shifting demographics, some lawmakers have opted to switch…